Thursday, May 14, 2009

To win over Hispanics, we need to open the doors, right? Let me quickly summarize my analysis of GSS data that I did in the comments over at Secular Right.

Percent of Mexican Americans who voted for candidateReagan (1980) 25Reagan (1984) 39Bush I (1988) 35Bush I (1992) 19Dole (1996) 18Bush II (2000) 45Bush II (2004) 36The open borders talking point you hear all the time is that Hispanics vote for Democrats only because right-wingers are so mean. Well, if that were true, Republican candidates should have done well before we started making so much noise about illegal immigration. Look over the numbers. Do you see that? Reagan beat Carter in a landslide in 1980. He carried 44 states. There was no strident talk about illegal immigration. What percent voted for the Gipper? TWENTY-FIVE percent!

13 comments:

1) The Hispanics did right by themselves to vote for Reagan. Reagan was for the 1986 amnesty under the lie that it would allow "comprehensive immigration reform of a broken system". How much US territory was thereby abrogated by Reagan to the Hispanics?

2) The fact that people even hypothesize that Hispanics will vote for the candidate most likely to admit more Hispanics is a tacit admission on their part that Hispanics should be stripped of their citizenship as traitors and deported if not executed.

The open borders talking point you hear all the time is that Hispanics vote for Democrats only because right-wingers are so mean.

Clearly that's not the whole story. I mean certainly you've lost them for a generation at least with the attitude the right (the Republican base, not the ones in power, who have actually been pretty good) has shown towards Hispanic immigrants.

But even without the backlash against anti-Hispanic sentiment, every minority group votes Democratic now. And groups which make less money continue to vote Democratic (despite Republican faux-populism.)

The Republicans have turned into a largely (creationist) Christian White male party. They win not a single other demographic, as far as I know.

Jim Bowery:

2) The fact that people even hypothesize that Hispanics will vote for the candidate most likely to admit more Hispanics is a tacit admission on their part that Hispanics should be stripped of their citizenship as traitors and deported if not executed.

Hispanics have been doubling as a percentage of the population roughly every 20 years since 1940:

1940: 1.5%1960: 3%1980: 6%2000: 12%

I think the trend is clear - Hispanics will make up roughly 1/4 of the population by 2020, which means that the tipping point where whites account for less than 50% of population is probably closer to 2025 or 2030 than 2042, as the Census Bureau now estimates.

As for the effect on Democrat vs. GOP politics, one has to remember that back in 1980 Hispanics were mostly settled Mexican Americans, probably at least 2nd generation and more than likely 3rd generation Americans, if not later. A lot of them were blue collar types, so they might even have been part of the Reagan Democrat cohort. Immigration was not even an issue in the 1980 election.

Nowadays, thanks to 30 years of large scale, almost out of control immigration, most Hispanics are either immigrants themselves or their first generation offspring. Let's also not forget that something like 1/3 of the Hispanic population is made up of illegal aliens, so if you're Hispanic it's almost a certainty that you fall into one of three categories: you're illegal yourself, you have a close relative who is, or you know someone who is. If you're a citizen and eligible to vote, are you going to vote for a guy who promises to kick your cousin/parent/friend out? Not likely.

We have probably already passed the tipping point. Hispanics will at some point in the near future have sufficient numbers to kill any sort of legislation that would cut down on illegal immigration, and along with that any caps on legal immigration will probably be blown away. The shame of it is that as we become a Latin American country, our society, our politics, our economy, and our culture will begin to resemble Latin America's. Having spent considerable time in Mexico, Central and South America over a 20 year period doing business, I can tell you that a transformation in that direction will not be an improvement.

Break Texas and California in half. Let the new and old states that border Mexico secede. Encourage Puerto Rico to secede. Exclude Hispanics from all other states except New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Nevada.

... or ...

Begin a massive effort to deport illegals, and revoke the green cards of people who harbor illegals. Consider a change in the Federal law to allow citizenship to be revoked (exile) for certain crimes, including the harboring of illegals.

Mr. Jew: There is a causal hypothesis here you're not copping to. Neocons are basically saying that they have to hand out US territory to foreigners because that way their coethnic citizens will vote for the Neocons. This is basically saying that those ethnics are attempting a land-grab from our nation -- which is not distinguished from other nations by being "a nation of immigrants". Such land-grabs may be carried out by any of a number of ruses but the bottom line is that those who give aid and comfort to the enemy are traitors.

It seems to me that many or most of those immigrants would happily become citizens if allowed. So I don't see how it's a "land grab." I also don't see why you define them as "the enemy" when we are not at war with them or the countries they come from.

Why are you obsessed with my ethnicity? I am a native-born American citizen, no less than you.

I think part of the reason Reagan supported the 1986 amnesty was that he bought the rhetoric that it was a 'one time only' deal, and that the promises of increased border security, employer sanctions and workplace enforcement were sincere. History has proven otherwise.

While we're on that point, I think it's safe to say that no other state in the union has been more accomodating towards our friends to the south than California.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be." ~ Lord Kelvin